Two German Sandwiches for Tourists in Germany by Ruth Paget
My go-to German “fast food” sandwiches when I lived in Stuttgart (Germany) for five years were schinken-käse-brot (ham and cheese sandwiches on dinner rolls) and butter-brot (open-faced sandwiches like they make in Denmark).
Both sandwiches are ideal for tourists especially tourists who visit German cities and towns on foot.
The place I would order schinken-kâse-brot was Sehne Ihre Bâckerei. Sehne (pronounced ‘zay-nay’) is a national bakery chain like McDonalds that sells bread (supposedly 365 kinds in German) and provides seating for kaffee klatsches (coffee breaks).
They have white bread baguettes, which I always picked up for toast. As a little treat, I would get two schinken-kâse sandwiches. I liked ordering these in German, “Zwei schinken-kâse, bitte – two ham and cheese sandwiches, please.” I drank Gerolsteiner fizzy water with these sandwichs and contemplated braving the 30 below, windy weather outside to go home.
The other sandwich I sometimes ate at home was a butter-brot or open-faced sandwich. I bought the ingredients for these at the Total Gas Station down from our apartment or Ikea’s grocery department downtown.
I toasted rye or pumpernickel bread and spread it with brown, large grain German mustard. On top of this, I would place tinned, smoked trout or smoked salmon and sliced red onion.
I thought this sandwich was very northern German and would drink a Beck’s lager with my Baltic sandwich. Our local Edeka supermarket had many choices of beer in 4-packs so you could sample beers from all around Germany. I was able to get Beck’s from Bremen in northern Germany this way in southern Stuttgart.
These sandwiches are available year-round usually at a pretty reasonable price. Tourists and locals alike can enjoy these while visiting or doing errands in cities and towns in Germany.
Polar Vortex Memories!
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France and developer of the Novgorod and Bento War Games
